Over the hill at 50? No, we’re not even at the summit

Jonathan Brocklebank

FOR the first time in these islands’ history there are more than ten million men and women over the age of 50 who are in employment. I thought it might be a good idea to introduce you to some of the team.

Your appreciation, please, for our 91-year-old head of state for whom retirement is not an option – and for her eldest son Charles who turns 70 this year and still knows not when that big promotion is coming.

A round of applause, too, for Joanna Lumley, 71, a 1960s fashion model turned actress who last weekend was employed to present the Baftas. Last year she was employed on four films and more TV documentaries than I have fingers. Later this year she is doing her first live tour.

Don’t forget the entire presenting staff on Radio 2. Yes, the music may increasingly be for the 12s and under but the DJs enthusing about it Monday to Friday are all in their 50s and 60s. Add another decade or so to that for weekends. Ageism at the BBC? Not necessarily the kind you think.

Joblessness is a little higher north of the Border but it is good to see over 50s workers still full of pluck even when employment situations don’t work out. I am thinking of members of the workforce such as Alex Salmond, 63, who barely stopped for a chicken biryani on losing his job as an MP before reinventing himself as Edinburgh Festival Fringe raconteur and Russian television talk show host.

Marching ever deeper into his seventh decade, the former first minister betrays no hint of suspicion that his political career may be over. And nor, for that matter, do those of us long enough in the tooth to recognise which among the politicians we would like to go quietly will never, ever oblige.

Citizens

Which brings me to one of the team of ten million’s newer recruits – me.

Since the beginning of 2018 I have presented myself at my place of employment as one of its senior citizens – the kind I have observed with something approaching pity all my working days.

They are ones who emit little groans of discomfort as they heave themselves into and out of workstations they still refer to as desks, who freeze and stare into space for minutes at a time until the name they were searching for enters their brain’s atmosphere (Tom Watson! That’s him. More on Tom later, if I remember).

At 50, I feel myself turning into the kind of weathered veteran who might provide the fatalistic voiceover if ever they were to make a film about this office – the institutionalised sage who goes all the way back to the 1900s and, as we move into the 2020s, will basically become Morgan Freeman.

But, now that I am signed up to the seniors’ team and our numbers have swelled to almost a third of the entire workforce, I would like to think we inspire more than sympathy among our youthful colleagues. For we are considerably smarter and more valuable than our occasional vacant gazes suggest.

With three decades-plus of work experience under our belts, our judgments are essentially sound and our ability to get the job done hopefully beyond question. The worst of our mistakes are, for the most part, well behind us – littering our 20s and 30s along with the bolshiness, the impetuosity and resentment of steady-as-she-goes middleaged bosses.

In my line of work, we have the advantage of remembering some of the stuff we are writing about: Punk, Thatcher’s Britain, Lockerbie, Dunblane, the SNP when they were as likely contenders for government as the Greens are today.

And, in almost any line of work you can imagine, the over 50s are the experienced hands from whom even the most talented young practitioners can usually learn a trick or two.

Legends

Nor need age mean a diminution in enthusiasm. I have seen twentysomethings roll their eyes in boredom at stories some journalists would give their right arms for. And I have seen septuagenarian newspaper legends with nothing left to prove rubbing their hands in glee at a fresh tip. I know which one’s reports I would rather read.

Something else that older workers should be better at is developing a sense of their own sell-by dates. They are, after all, supposedly closer at hand. Happily, I look around and see people much older than I am with no talent at all for knowing when the game is up.

In 2009, at the age of 59, Tom Watson found himself in a two man play-off for the Open Championship. The experience of losing it ‘tore his guts out’, he said later. He believed he still had it in him to be the oldest winner of a golf major by more than a decade and he was damn near right.

Last year, after Kevin Spacey was removed from the film All the Money in the World over sex assault allegations, 80year-old director Sir Ridley Scott brought in 87-year-old Christopher Plummer to play the role of J. Paul Getty. The poor fossil had just ten days to shoot dozens of scenes.

And he totally smashed it. Plummer is now the oldest nominee for an acting Oscar of all time. I hope he wins it. People are not over the hill until they decide they are.

Long and wildly may we continue to over-estimate our shelf lives.